


Selecting

by femme4jack, fractalserpentine, HopeofDawn



Series: Domesticus [2]
Category: Transformers, Transformers (Bay Movies), Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: Alternate Universe, Anal Plug, Blood, Bodily Fluids, Chemical warfare, Cussing, Dark, Dystopia, F/M, Forced Orgasm, Humor, M/M, Massage, Minor Character Death, Needles, Non Consensual, Other, Rape, Sexual Slavery, Size Difference, Size Kink, Slavery, Torture, Transformation, Transforming butt plug, Violence, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-01
Updated: 2012-10-08
Packaged: 2017-11-15 10:37:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/526374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/femme4jack/pseuds/femme4jack, https://archiveofourown.org/users/fractalserpentine/pseuds/fractalserpentine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/HopeofDawn/pseuds/HopeofDawn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Homo sapiens domesticus: selecting.<br/>Classification among human stock is typically determined before shipping.  The highest grade of humans should be roughly a quarter vorn old, in good general health, and thoroughly trained to service.  Presold humans are typically marked with the glyph of their patron Tower; other humans are usually auctioned.  [Link to auction dates and times in your sector.]</p><p>--<br/>Repost, due to difficulties in accessing chapter 2.  Sorry, guys.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **Content: Dark, dystopian AU, flirtation, massage and groping between human characters, xeno rape, slavery, sexual slavery, torture, injection, anal plug, cussing, some bodily fluids, violence, minor character death**

Homo sapiens domesticus: selecting.  
Classification among human stock is typically determined before shipping. The highest grade of humans should be roughly a quarter vorn old, in good general health, and thoroughly trained to service. Presold humans are typically marked with the glyph of their patron Tower; other humans are usually auctioned. [Link to auction dates and times in your sector.]

 

\--

 

The vividly lit facility was impossible to miss from where Mikaela hid in the lakeshore brush. The complex was almost garishly bright, radiating a diffuse glow that dimmed the stars above. Once the grid had gone down, only the richest enclaves had lights at night. That hadn't changed much even after the aliens had arrived with their promises of aid and trade; none of the tech seemed to make it to the masses who scraped by outside of those guarded enclaves. 

These buildings looked like nothing she'd seen in any city before the collapse, nor in the glimpses of the enclaves after. Their distinctly alien nature was obvious in their dimensions, but even more so in the unexpected angles and curves. It was almost like a honeycomb -- what she remembered of a honeycomb, anyway. It’d been a long time since she’d seen one. 

But she had seen a honeycomb, once-- her gradeschool’d had a window hive, back before the droughts and the oil wars and the genejump. She remembered. Not like all the young kids these days, too little when the pollinators vanished to even recall what bees were like, what honey was like. 

There was a rumor that the aliens were promising a self-replicating artificial pollinator to replace the painstaking work of hand pollinating flowers, fruit trees and berry bushes. But then, there were always rumors -- promises of new wonders, of solutions without cost. Maybe this time the rumors were true. And maybe people just needed something to believe in. 

"Ready, Mik?" Epps whispered. 

Mikaela took one more long look at the target. The chances that her dad was inside was slim-to-none, but at least they might finally find out what was going on there. If nothing else, the coldly practical part of her brain reminded her, there’d be all kinds of tech, well-worth appropriating. "Let's take a swim," she said, pulling the hood of her black wetsuit over her close-cropped hair and then the stolen alien-tech over her nose. She swallowed hard against the gag reflex as the thing shifted, adapting itself to the shape of her face and nose, slipping nozzles into her airways and sealing tight. Breathing felt strange with the thing on; it vibrated slightly with each exhalation, a tickling sensation. Alien tech didn’t care much about human comfort, but at least the damned things worked.

Beside her, Epps sneezed quietly, shook his head. Mikaela cast him a crooked grin. Together, they slipped into the cold water. They ducked under, took deep breaths -- and sank beneath the lapping surface, leaving not a ripple in their wake.

\---

As with most of the aliens’ other scattered training facilities, getting in was harder than getting out. Compared to the long, cold swim, accessing the logistics and shipping center of the sprawling complex was childsplay, once wetsuits were hidden and stolen jumpsuits pulled on.

At this hour of the night, the shipping center was deserted. Warehouses were warehouses, no matter what species built them, Mikaela reflected, as she worked silently with Epps. Goods to be taken offplanet by the aliens were stacked in huge crates, all the way to the ceiling -- waxes, fabric, wood, and metals. A smaller area contained foodstuffs and other materials for this training center. And another large area, where Mikaela focussed, was filled with huge shipping containers of tech for the enclaves and supplies for the regional training facilities. 

A saboteur, once she knew the system, could swap or reprogram tagging labels and destinations, could send tech on long, unguarded trips across the country, while transferring crates full of useless wax and powdery alien paint stuff to the enclaves. 

Mikaela knew the system. 

She finished attaching the last of her tagging devices to the crates of tech, now relabeled. Within each was a small fortune in weaponry, spare parts, machining tools, solar panels, sensor devices, rainfall generators, and all the other tech that never made it to the people. With a little luck, these crates would be shipped via poorly-guarded overground convoy to the Denver training facility, up winding mountain roads... past a multitude of good ambush points. When the communities caught this tagging device signal, they’d know exactly which convoys to attack. 

Epps nodded in satisfaction, cast one last look around the loading area. If the ambush crews managed to capture even half of this, it would be the best take the Resistance had ever managed. And if they didn’t... at least the shipping delays would annoy the hell outta the enclaves. “I think that does it,” he whispered, turning to head back out to the lakewall. 

Mikaela shook her head. “You know I can’t go. Not until I find out what happened to him.”

The corner of Epps’s mouth turned up. “Yeah, figured it was gonna be something like that.”

Mikaela stiffened. “Aim to stop me?” she said, weight shifting forward. Epps had seen five years in the Air Force, had four inches on her and outweighed her by eighty pounds. She’d have a hard time taking him, and a harder time doing it quietly. 

Epps snorted. "Don't aim to do nothin', except go in with you and make sure you get out. You really think I'd let you do this alone, girl?"

Mikaela's eyes narrowed. "This better not be some sort of misplaced chivalry."

Epps tapped at the jumpsuit she wore, right over the aliens’ symbol -- a stern mechanical face, with something like tear tracks running from eye to jawline. “Admit it. You like having me around.”

“Only for that cute ass of yours.” Well, that and the pockets. Epps had an uncanny talent for happening to have just the right thing at just the right time. Mikaela growled in mock warning. “Fine. Just don’t get in my way.”

Epps held up his hands placatingly. “Whatever you say, Chief. Where you planning to look first?” 

Mikaela drew a deep breath. “Remember Mike’s theory? That they gotta be drugging the volunteers? I wanna test it, find some of the stuff they feed the recruits, maybe figure out how they’re making the food.” The food blocks didn’t even seem to exist outside these central facilities -- the regional ones fed the volunteers well, but it was all earth food. Food block production was a tech the aliens had never shared with even the enclaves, let alone the scattered masses. It could solve the food crisis, for all Mikaela knew. “And... I need to find out where they send people -- names, manifests, coordinates, communications, anything.” The thought of it made her clench her fists. Nobody knew what happened to any of the volunteers, once the cargo ships took off. No one wrote letters or called home, nobody sent so much as a fucking passenger pigeon back. It was like they were dead, and for all Mikaela or anyone else knew, they actually were. 

Her dad hadn't even been a volunteer. He'd been "recruited" as a detailing trainer. The credits had been faithfully deposited in the account held at the commissary just outside one of the enclaves for close to a year, and then abruptly they'd stopped. The regional center to which he'd been drafted claimed to have no record of his ever having been there, and made it very clear that she should quit inquiring if she valued her skin.

Epps nodded, slowly. “I should be able to get closer to the shuttle loading zone than you. Worse comes to worst, I can pull the same trick we did back at Key Largo.” 

Mikaela smiled crookedly. Peel off the jumpsuit, act like a volunteer, and you could go pretty much anywhere within the gated walls. Try too hard to act like a volunteer or let the human staff get a good look at you, and it was pathetically easy to get yourself thrown out of the training facility. Crazies were always trying to get into these places. 

But the only volunteers here were male, and security was tighter. Mikaela would never be able to pass as one of the star-bound. 

She glanced at her oddly alien-looking watch, stolen from the same facility where they'd gotten the jumpsuits. "Let's meet back here in twelve hours. If one of us can't make it back then, check in at six hour intervals. But don't stay longer than forty-eight, Epps, even if I don't show." 

Epps nodded. “Same goes for you, Chief. Watch your back.” 

 

\---

 

From the inside, the complex was even larger. Human-sized portions had been built into alien-sized rooms and hallways. Unlike at the regional facilities, none of the alien-sized doors opened for her, leaving Mikaela to take long and winding routes through human access corridors. Only one other team of Resistance fighters had ever made it out of this complex with any relevant information, and so she had only the vaguest idea of where she ought to be headed. Some crossroads were marked with bizarre alien words or designs or whatever, all indecipherable.

A chance glimpse of an electrically-powered and self-steered cart, burdened with a block of the foodstuff almost a yard tall and wide, turned Mikaela’s attention away from the human zones. She felt like a mouse, scuttling along hallways at least thirty five feet tall, and likely twice that wide. From the scuffs on the flooring, the aliens came this way frequently. 

And evidently, they stood around in the corridor as well. Mikaela rounded a sharp corner, and jolted back from the biggest freaking alien she’d ever seen, heart hammering in her throat. A stifled squeak of indrawn air escaped before she could stop it--and that angular, inhuman head turned, snake-quick, red ‘eyes’ irising down into scarlet pinpricks as they spotted her.

“What the--what have we here?” Chrome-steel fingers caught at her, easily circumventing her reflective flinch, and seized her around the waist, lifting her upwards in a dizzying rush. She clung desperately, trying to stifle her terror; each of those fingers was as thick as her leg, a massive bundle of taut cables and shifting parts, capped in a jaggedly barbed talon nearly as long as her forearm. Those claws, however, were the very least of the alien’s weaponry. She spotted the mounts for what looked like cannons, folded back behind those complicated shoulder-parts. More cylinder-shaped mountings that hard earned experience told her were likely hidden artillery were visible along the lower arm-sections as well--and now were pointing directly at her as she dangled from the thing’s grip.

The robot was squat, broad and massively built, with a low-slung head set between two loops of heavy, black-steel tank tread. It regarded Mikaela with what looked like bafflement, and as ridiculous as it was to apply human stereotypes to mechanical aliens about a thousand times their size, she couldn’t help it-- the alien just *looked* like a thug. 

Training, she’d been training for this -- the volunteers were stupid, were sheep, were docile and simple. Mikaela forced her fists down. “Uh, sorry,” she called to the thing, and needed no acting to put the waver in her voice. It was a fucking long way down from here. “I... I got lost.” 

"Yeah, I can see that," it said, its tone almost... amused. "This ain’t a safe sector for curious little monkeys. They might go squish." The alien raised the individual plates of its combat-green armor in a rippling, shrug-like motion, as if flicking something away from it. 

Mikaela took a deep breath, hoping the monster didn't have some way of sensing if she was lying. Surely her terror would be considered normal in this circumstance, and not a sign of deception. "Please... I... I have no idea how I got here. They sent me to get a box out of storage and I must have taken a wrong turn. Can you tell me how to get back to food service?" 

The alien made a sound a great deal like a snort, and hissed a... word? in its language. Perhaps it was a phrase -- something with six rapid clicks, threaded through a popping crackle, with a shrill whine at the end. Mikaela had heard it before, from other aliens. She could have sworn the alien held her a bit away from itself, almost squeamishly, and then it stalked off in the direction from which she had come. 

Being carried by something this big was an experience Mikaela hoped never to repeat. The tall walls seemed to rush by, bouncing sickeningly with each jouncing step. The alien wasn’t loud, exactly, but each step still hissed with the industrial sound of moving gears and working pistons, and each footfall vibrated through her like thunder as the alien carried her through a dizzying array of giant-sized corridors and doorways. She dug her fingers into the unyielding metal of the monster’s hand, trying to slow the hammering of her heart--could it hear that too? Would it even care if it did? 

Another turn, and the corridor ended in a human-sized set of double doors, with more of the alien engravings over them. The robot stopped, its movements inhumanly abrupt, and dumped Mikaela ungraciously upon the floor, its hand swooping down with stomach-lurching speed. “Here’s where you belong,” the thing said. “Here. Stay. Got it?” It pointed a barbed metal finger at her, as if she were a stray dog, and Mikaela had to fight back a hysterical giggle. Instead she nodded dumbly, and the thing seemed satisfied with that. “Good. You get found again where you ain’t supposed to be, next time we won’t be so nice.” The monster straightened. “Get inside,” it ordered, pointing at the door.

“Um--yessir,” Mikaela said, hoping against hope that’s what the aliens wanted to be called, then did what she was told, slipping inside. Against all odds, she’d gotten this far--now she just needed to find out what else the aliens were hiding.

\-----

Mikaela kept her head down, and continued to run the quietly humming sweeper over the floor, trying to watch the volunteers out of the corner of her eye. They were boisterous, excited. The spongy-looking cubes they ate set them apart from support staff and training instructors alike, who ate at the other end of the refectory. They joked about how tasteless it was, about how none of them had crapped in over a week, like it was something to be proud of. 

It meant they were destined for the stars. Heroes. "Like that Captain fucking Kirk my mom used to write porn about," one of them joked. 

If any were afraid or had any qualms about what was coming, they didn't show it. 

One of them noticed her, elbowed his companion, then walked straight toward her. “Well hello there, chica,” he purred, hips canted forward suggestively. The effects of his last four months of training were particularly obvious up close like this. He’d been depilated, was hairless from the nose down. He’d also been well fed, and had developed a corded musculature, especially across the shoulders and arms. Smoother skin made his cock and his muscles seem to stand out more. Kept nude after the first few weeks, he was a warm caramel all over, without a hint of a tan line. “I got an hour, you got an hour -- let me show you how very, very good I've become with massage.” He gestured in a way that could have illustrated either kneading or a caress. 

Mikaela leaned against the sweeper and gave the volunteer a calculated, slightly bored look. This... could be an opportunity to find out more than they ever had before, since volunteers never seemed to leave the program -- not past the first week or two, and rarely enough even then. But how far was she willing to take that, with this full-of-himself starboy? No matter how nice his biceps were, she'd sworn off this type after the whole mess with Trent.

Not to mention that it wasn't like birth control or condoms were easy to come by. She tried to avoid that kind of contact with men altogether. She didn't need a baby to take care of on top of her work in the resistance and just staying fed. Who wanted to bring a child into this kind of world, anyhow?

"I'm not made of metal, in case you hadn't noticed," she said, pointedly looking him up and down. "Your technique might be off."

The volunteer raised his eyebrows, then he was sauntering around her. He put both his hands pointedly on her shoulders, and with practiced motions proceeded to show her exactly how good he was. He leaned in with a sultry whisper, his lips right on her ear, "I'm part of group 114 -- shipping out at o’dark hundred. Why don't you let this astronaut give you a taste of heaven, babe. I'm temporarily sterile and a hundred percent disease free. They made sure of that."

"Hmm... maybe. I like to get to know a guy first. I don't even know your name, and it's not like you can buy me a drink here." 

"Name's Raoul, chica. How 'bout you sit with me and I'll rub your shoulders all nice like," he purred, moving his full body closer to her back so she could feel his heat through her jumpsuit. "I'll even give you half my cube. It may not taste like much, but it makes you feel real good inside. Then we'll go back to my room and I'll make you feel even better."

Mikaela made a point of pretending to look around for her supervisor, debating. Then she shrugged. "You can rub my back, starboy. I'm not promising anything more than that." She let him grab her hand and pull her back over to the table where a couple of the other volunteers were sitting on benches. He pulled up a second bench and sat behind her, his muscular thighs straddling her lewdly. With one hand, he began kneading her shoulder, while the other reached around her to tear off a hunk of the cube and bring it to her mouth. 

It reminded her of a soft version of a rice cake she had tried as a kid, back when stuff like that was still manufactured. But even more tasteless. Spongy though, like the angel food cake she had once made her dad for his birthday. Because she was his little angel, and he didn't need any encouragement in the devil department back then. It sort of melted in her mouth even as she swallowed it. 

“So. Temporarily sterile?” Mikaela asked. She braced her elbows on the table as Raoul’s fingers found a knot, just under her shoulder blade, and smoothed it away with probing care. He worked away the soreness and started on the tension in her neck, next. 

“Hn,” Raoul pressed his lips to her ear, like he was telling a secret. “Guess you’ve been working here, and wouldn’t know. Ran us through some kinda ray back at the other facility, before they put men and women together. Just before we got to work on our first mech.” 

“S’posed to wear off by the time we leave,” pointed out one of Raoul’s companions.

“You tryin’ to harsh my buzz, baboso?” Raoul demanded, turning quickly back to Mikaela. “Ignore that cabron, chica. He is as stupid as the dog. Knows nothing. One of the mechs dropped him on his head. Now, where were we?” 

“Mechs?” Mikaela asked with a crooked grin, hard-pressed to keep from groaning. His hands were, Mikaela had to admit, both very strong and very knowledgeable. Soft, too, strangely. Must be all the wax and oils the volunteers worked with. 

“Mech. The robots. Like us to call ‘em that,” Raoul said easily, moving to her shoulders. He’d been right -- the food, whatever it was, made her stomach feel comfortably warm. It left the shadow of an aftertaste, as well, something like the way she remembered cinnamon tasting, and made her teeth feel very smooth. The stuff could well be drugged. She took the next chunk from Raoul with her own hand and nibbled it. Under the guise of reaching beside her to rub a thumb along the inside of Raoul’s thigh, she palmed the rest into the pocket of her jumpsuit. 

Raoul put his nose against the back of her neck and inhaled. Mikaela swallowed hard. "So, why exactly do they make you guys go naked?" she asked quickly. "Seems like with all those points and edges on them, you'd want some protection." 

“They’re actually pretty careful with us. If you know what you can step on and what you can’t, it’s pretty safe,” shrugged one of Raoul’s companions. “Jake here slipped and fell right offa one,” added another of the volunteers, making a grasping gesture in the air. “It caught him just like that. Lotta bumps and scrapes, but nothing bad. Don’t think clothes woulda helped.”

“Ain’t much soap and no washing staff in space, chica,” purred Raoul, spreading his legs a little more. He nuzzled the short hair on the back of Mikaela’s neck, and then kissed the skin below her hairline with warm, soft lips, flicking his tongue out to taste her. “Unless maybe you wanna come with us, yeah?” 

Or not. “Kinda doubt I could pass as one of you. The mechs -- what’s their whole thing with the hair?” After going through the trouble of removing all the rest of the volunteers’ hair, why not their eyebrows and what was on top as well?

Raoul shrugged, digging knuckles into the small of her back in a way that made Mikaela want to melt. “Reduces shedding, I think. They don’t like it when organic stuff gets into cracks.”

“Heard that they made the group before us just totally bald,” said one of the other volunteers at the table, waggling his eyebrows. “Eyelashes and all.”

That made Raoul laugh, a velvety sound, open and carefree. “How did the mechs tell ‘em apart? They have a hard enough time figuring out which of *us* is which.” His hands began to wander from Mikaela’s back to her chest.

“Easy there, spaceboy,” said Mikaela, catching at his wrists, squeezing until he returned them to her back. She softened her tone. “Tell me more about where you’re going. Any idea?” 

Raoul grinned. “Well, chica, I’ll tell you what they told us.....”

 

\-----

 

Mikaela spent the rest of the morning exploring the human sector, searching for alternate routes and little-used passages, sweeper ready in hand in case she should be stopped or questioned. She’d gone on enough ambushes with the Resistance to know when something big was in the works -- probably the offworld departure of Raoul and the other volunteers. If she could figure out where they were going, where they were going to gather, perhaps she might have a better chance at getting down that hallway to the place the blocks of food came from. Despite her planning, Mikaela was still caught unprepared when the lights came on in the empty hangar she’d been exploring. She had time only to duck back into the shadows behind a sinister-looking metal wire enclosure -- apparently with no door -- when the volunteers began filing in. 

Laughing, they broke into groups of twenty, filing onto five raised platforms near the center of the room. Murmuring among each other, interested and alert, the volunteers peered around, waiting until everyone had taken their places.

And then Epps walked past her. 

He’d stripped off his stolen jumpsuit, and was shaven close enough in anticipation of this mission to pass casual inspection. He smiled, chatted pleasantly with the volunteers near him, doing as they did. He was good at acting like he knew what he was doing. 

Fuck. What *was* he doing? This section of volunteers was due to leave -- not till this evening, but... fuck. There were risks, and then there were *risks*, and this one fell on the far side of that line.

Mikaela leaned out as far as she dared, trying to catch Epps’s eye. If he got off the platform now, he might be able to make it to her shadowed corner. The other recruits might see, but... something felt very, very wrong to her. 

Then, just as Epps’s gaze met hers... clear walls of energy rose up around each little platform of volunteers. Around ten feet wide, long, and tall, the enclosures were quite crowded. The volunteers seemed not to mind. Inside the cage, Epps put his hand to the energy wall. It crackled a little, but did not let him through.

And then the mech-sized door irised open, and two of the aliens walked in. A hush fell over the volunteers. 

Both aliens had made themselves look more human, less monstrous, than the green thug-alien from before. The yellow and purple one was smaller and more compact -- though Mikaela never thought she’d be calling a twenty-foot-tall robot ‘small’. It carried deep-treaded wheels on its shoulders, and the spread doors on its back looked like something torn from a jeep or small military vehicle. It had taken a lot of trouble with the segments of its face, to judge by the range of its expressions as it ‘conversed’ with the other one. Something about the alien seemed... slimy to Mikaela, seemed fickle and too smooth, like a politician’s grin. 

The other one was nearly as tall as the thug-alien, but far more slender in its build. It wore the folded rotor blades of a helicopter down its back in a rattling bundle. Minor portions of its frame were painted the same bright purple and fluorescent yellow as the smaller alien, but most of its surface was a dull, flat gray that seemed somehow sinister. Gunmetal gray, maybe. 

The rotor-alien seemed bored, uninterested in any of the proceedings. It hung back while the purple-colored alien paced around the cluster of energy-walled platforms and the crowded, expectant volunteers within, inspecting them. When the purple alien emitted squealing chatter for several seconds, the gray alien lifted its rotor blades briefly in something like a shrug in response, a gesture which seemed to anger the purple one, leading to still more electronic chitter-yowling. 

Finally, with another insolent shrug, the rotor-alien walked forward and reached into the first of the boxes of volunteers. Those energy walls, ten feet tall, were laughably short compared to the alien, hardly coming to its waist. The humans within were knee-high. The volunteers, by now quite accustomed to handling, seemed unworried -- one even stepped forward with a cocky swagger. 'Look at me. I'm not scared of any fucking giant aliens.'

Raoul, Mikaela realized. The one from the mess hall, who had shared his... food block. 

The gray alien caught him around the middle, lifted him up to the height of its crimson-glowing eyes -- what Mikaela presumed were its eyes, anyway, for they were as mechanical as the rest of the thing. Raoul wriggled a little, but smiled openly with that cocky grin, worked one hand free to wave a little at the alien. The thing’s eyes irised down to pinpoints, and it spat a modem-line of code at the other one. Then it turned to an alien-sized table at the far end of the room, where the purple alien joined it. 

The table was too tall to see what was going on. Most of the volunteers, Mikaela figured, wouldn’t be able to see, either -- the setup made the hair at the back of her neck stand on end. Spider-senses tingling, Mikaela looked around, spotted one of the many ladders evidently installed for human convenience. Climbing it would take her out of the deepest part of the shadows, but....

Her dad might have been where these volunteers were now. Fuck. She had to know. 

Leaving her sweeper behind, Mikaela climbed. 

She’d just reached a metal catwalk that spanned one side of the warehouse when a sharp, metallic crackle rippled through the hangar space, followed by Raoul’s shocked cry. 

The sharpness of the sound nearly unbalanced her, silenced the rest of the huge room. As anticipated, she had an unobstructed view from this angle. 

The gray rotor-alien had Raoul pressed flat on his back, head towards the alien, against a padded surface. All six of its sharp-edged fingers pinned him -- both backwards-pointing thumbs pushing down on his shoulders, a pair of fingertips covering each of his thighs, huge palm cupping chest and belly. And he’d... apparently, he’d somehow come, to judge by his jerking cock, the semen on the edge of the alien’s hand. He lay near a piece of machinery that seemed hulking compared with him. The alien picked up some kind of a thick tube, which attached to the machine. It chittered at the smaller alien, who squealed back, gesturing as if to point something out. Raoul seemed stunned, didn’t struggle. Not even when the rotor-alien lowered the tube... and fit the open end over his bared genitals. The translucent tube seemed to suck itself tight to Raoul’s skin.

Then the alien picked up a solid rod, likewise attached by a long cable to the squat machine. And, with more delicacy than Mikaela would have expected of a creature so horrifyingly assembled, the alien pressed the tip of the rod to the skin just beneath Raoul’s captured genitals.

Again the harsh electric sound crackled forth, and Raoul’s hips jerked, his body emptying itself into that sucking tube, spasm after spasm. It was like some sick enactment of the worst alien abduction porno the internet had come up with. She remembered finding that stuff as a kid, back when there’d still been an internet to speak of -- it wasn't like her dad had monitored her browsing. It felt fictional, impossible. Except this was far, far too real. 

Another electronic crackle, and this time Raoul screamed as he came, a thin, high cry that could have been pain or bliss or both. The alien waited out those thrusting pulses, and then disengaged the tube, freeing Raoul’s red-flushed cock, the organ erect and weeping. 

Then the gray alien flipped its captive over, pushing him face down into the padding. It didn’t even have to pin him now, Raoul was still stunned, shivering with the force of his orgasms. The alien pinched the skin just under his shoulderblade between two murderous talons, and then a part of its hand... twisted, somehow, changed. The metal seemed to move, like it was spinning itself down into a weapon... or an outsized hypodermic needle. 

Mikaela couldn’t keep herself from flinching as her fears proved founded. The alien slipped its needle into that fold of skin as if it wasn’t even trying. Raoul yelped, but the creature was already withdrawing the thing, leaving a subtle swelling behind, a small lump just beneath the shoulder blade. Liquid? A tracking device? Jesus H fucking Christ. 

The needle folded away, as quickly as it had formed, and then was replaced by a thick rod of some sort. Raoul began to thrash and fight when the robot inserted the rod into the cleft of his ass. The alien spat a dozen of its squealing-modem sounds, and even to Mikaela's ear it was a warning of some sort. And then it used its other hand to pin him down. 

"Hijo de puta!" Raoul screamed as the rod pistoned once, leaving something behind that Mikaela could see even from her distance, round and thick. The thing, set flush with his skin, stretched his ass wide enough to make him bleed. The butt end of the plug was as big as Mikaela’s wrist. Raoul was shaking... sobbing. 

Raoul clutched at his abdomen when the alien released him, and those terrible sharp claws seized his ankle, instead. The monster handled him like a piece of meat, dragging him closer and onto his side, and then its whole hand closed over his lower leg, like it wanted to pick him up by that limb. Instead, Raoul cried out again, flinching and kicking. The alien released him a moment later, and Raoul jerked his arms and legs in, trying to curl into a tight ball -- but not before Mikaela spotted a small mark, one of the aliens’ words scrawled in stark black on the caramel skin of his ankle. A tattoo? Jesus, how had the thing -- and just with its hand!

The purple and yellow alien nodded, squealed something that sounded like a box of parts tumbling off a high shelf. The rotor-alien gave Raoul no time to recover -- simply scooped him up and deposited him in the smaller of two big steel shipping crates. The two aliens exchanged a few more yowling words... and then each of them walked back to the cages of other humans, reached in, and selected a new subject. 

And the process began all over again, this time in stereo. 

Not all of the volunteers were tattooed, or forced to come into the tube. But all of them were electrically stimulated once, spilling over the steel of their captor’s hand. All of them were injected. And all of them were impaled with a plug. Around a quarter were treated like Raoul, first milked into that sucking tube, and then injected and plugged, and finally tattooed. They all were placed into the separate, smaller box. 

Only two of the men, the lucky ones, went into the wire cage on the floor -- not a shipping crate at all, just an open-topped and doorless pen made of razorwire. They alone were not injected, were not raped. 

Oh God. Epps was down there. Mikaela clenched her fists, nails going white. 

The purple alien plucked Epps out of the force-shielded pen a few minutes later. And there was nothing, absolutely nothing, she could do... except watch as the gray alien applied its electric shock, as Epps grit his teeth and shook and came. The alien blurted a sound, and then Mikaela gasped, going limp with relief as it placed him in the razorwire pen, saving him from the rest of the procedures, and whatever fate awaited the others. She tuned out the rest of the screams, the sobbing pleas and wild cries that were some mixture of agony and horrible pleasure, focusing instead on the layout of the room, possible escape routes. She had to get Epps out of there. She had laser wire cutters among her tools. Moving carefully, quietly, she headed back towards the ladder. 

Suddenly her attention came crashing back to the sinister looking gray mech. It turned and made more of the hissing, buzzing noises at another mech who had just walked in -- the greenish one that had intercepted Mikaela in her search for the foodblock device. It should have seemed smaller from her perch on the walkway -- it didn’t. The perspective just made more of its weapons visible. The thing was a walking tank, unbelievably massive. From this angle, the crests on its shoulders looked like they did double duty as rocket launchers, each loaded with a missile as big as her leg. She hadn’t seen the monster’s extra blades when it had grabbed her that first time -- not just the claws on its fingers, which were already evil-looking enough, but a set of blades attached to one of its arm weapons, each of the curved silver sabers taller than her whole body. The thug-alien said something in reply, full of clicks and lower-resonance buzzes. Then it lifted its arm, as if to point at the razor-wire pen of humans, though its fingers were clenched in a fist. One of the strange-looking guns on its arm hissed, metal pieces spinning, the long tube emitting a cold green glow.

"Hey you!" Mikaela screamed at the top of her lungs, before sanity could overtake her desperation. "Green and ugly! What the hell you think you’re doing?!" 

All three mechs, and every other human in sight, turned and looked straight up at her. 

Well, fuck.

 

\-----

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	2. Chapter 2

Well, fuck.

This is what happened when you went in without a plan, Mikaela thought semi-hysterically. The nearest robot, the one with the rotors, darted a taloned hand out to grab her, chittering in what sounded like exasperation--

\--but Mikaela had learned her lesson from her earlier encounter, was already moving. She ducked, feeling the gust of wind as barbed talons snapped together in the air bare inches above her head, dived and rolled, scrambling for a tight space that she couldn’t be pried out of. Maybe if she led them on a merry chase, distracted them long enough, Epps could--well, she didn’t know what he could do, but she had to do *something*. She had to try.

She rolled off the edge of the ledge, leaping for the next, a support surface for a thick bundle of cabling. A shower of sparks erupted behind her as those snapping talons dived again, missing and severing several of the wires. More mechanical yowls and click-chattering erupted, and she scrambled on all fours for a moment before regaining her feet, running with everything she had. Then the thing had her, a metal grip closing around her legs and lifting her upside down into the air. Fast--how could things so big be so fast?? Mikaela struggled, kicking and squirming with all she was worth. One foot slipped free, wiggling through the spaces in the monster’s grip--she dangled almost upside down, kicking at gray armored metal, shouting imprecations.

“Fucking monsters! Slavers! You fucking pieces of rapist junkyard filth--!” Wriggling, thrashing, she managed to free her other leg, minus her boot and the leg of the jumpsuit. She slid off the polished edge of the rotor-alien’s hand, felt the whoosh of air as it grabbed at her -- and then she was falling, a scream caught in her throat. She hit before the scream could escape, slamming down hard, knee and hip impacting first. Mikaela tumbled over, caught herself at the edge of... an enormous screen? One of the aliens’ computer terminal things, set high into one wall. She staggered to her feet atop the equipment, dove for the makeshift cabling and tighter spaces in back. Her knee gave way, just locked up as the green thug-alien reached for her -- sending her sprawling across a dozen squares of brightly-lit alien scrawlings.

Alarms began to blare, warbling up and down in discordant, inhuman wails, as every single door in the area shot open. And all the energy walls vanished.

Including the ones around the pens.

Docile the ‘recruits’ might have been, but stupid they weren’t. The volunteers took only a fraction of a second to realize their sudden freedom. Seizing their chance, they scattered in every direction, running as if their lives depended on it. Only those that had already been sorted--plus those enclosed in the razorwire pen and Mikaela herself--were still trapped. Still, it was far better luck than she deserved. “Run!!” she screamed hoarsely, thinking of her father. Was this how he had died? Tested for God knew what and--euthanized? Or was he still out there, stuffed into a crate and shipped off to be some kind of sick alien toy? “Run, dammit!”

 

\------

 

Every single unsorted human in the place was loose.

“Brawl! You fragging glitch!” Vortex turned towards his unfortunate teammate, only to totter on one pede, rotor blades flaring forward for balance as the squishies raced all over the fragging floor.

“Step on one, and it’ll be coming out of *your* allotment,” hissed Swindle, hurrying to finish up with the human he held pinned to the padded table. Just like the others, it screamed and kicked as he inserted its plug, crying out as the miniature transformative mechanism began its work, slowly blossoming open on the inside, kneading and gradually extending deeper. After enduring the device for an orn or so, the human would be able to take an entire fingertip into its port -- and would probably end up being forced to do so. Stupid organic would thank him later. If the creatures weren’t properly stretched and prepared first, the damned towerlings could rupture the organics’ internals with their play. No one would pay top price for a human that broke the first time you used it. He added the sobbing human to the bigger shipping crate, with the rest of the auction-worthy goods.

“Nono, look -- here it is! I caught it!” Brawl brandished the black-haired human triumphantly. It was female, which begged the question of how it had gotten here in the first place. “I can, uh, just put it with the... huh. I caught this one before, down the manufacturing hall.” Brawl’s captive kicked and bit at him, continuing to shout in its strange deep voice. They really were a bit cute, in a repulsive sort of way. This one especially -- so much fight and slag-talk for something so itty bitty. Did it really think those calcified dentae nubs could do anything but break on him?

Some cycles he actually pondered the idea of having one as a pet. Not the way the spoiled towerlings did. But it could be... nice to have one to polish his cannons and clean the minute workings of his components with those teensy tiny brushes. Other mecha on this planet got detailed all the time -- they just stopped by here or one of those other training centers and the humans practically fought each other to work on them. But... just the thought of having so many organics climbing over him, putting their tickling little hands into his parts, shedding fur and oils... no. Still. One -- he could handle one. One would be nice.

….Then again, what if the human broke? Or leaked on him? The chances of something going wrong and leaving a nasty mess... no, maybe best leave the itty bitties to the tower brats and those who strutted around trying to act like ‘em.

His musings were interrupted by Onslaught's voice over the team channel. He was monitoring, as he always did, from the sanctuary of his office.

_//Take that one and the other three low-responders out and dispose of them. Now, before we have every emergency response unit in this hemisphere show up on our landing pad! You're in everyone’s fragging way in there.//_

_//But -- I....//_

“You can put them on the cargo runway and vaporize them from a distance," Vortex snapped as he scooped up one of the scurrying creatures. "Primus, never thought I’d see a mech so frightened of getting meat in his joints.”

Brawl's armor, which had compressed tightly with alarm at that very notion, settled back into its normal configuration. "Come on, squishies, no time to lose," he said, herding the three low-responders into one corner of their wire pen, though not without effort. They were fast, and the one with the darkest coloring kept trying to elude him with diving rolls and quick directional changes. Every time he collected two between his talons and reached for the third, one of the others wriggled away. Primus, they were like energon gels. He needed more hands.

"Hurry!" Swindle yelled from where he was chasing after the valuable organics who had escaped, stooped over like a mech trying to swat a glitchmouse. The energy barriers finally started to come back online, but that pit-damned alarm kept blaring. The female squishy must’ve fragged up the system real good.

Brawl finally managed to scoop the humans all up, but despite his care, one of them snagged its covering on the edge of his talon, leaving a horrible smear of its rust-toned organic fluid. "Frag!" he yelped, hurrying toward the entrance, desperate to put all the squirming, screaming things down. Swindle screeched at him, and he almost fell to avoid squishing one of the creatures who made a break right under his pede for the main sorting center hatchway.

Another angry squeal from Swindle told Brawl that a few of the unsorted organics had escaped out the hatchway as he left. Not his problem, he thought, stalking away from the chaos and toward the runway. He glanced at Blast Off, the shuttle waiting impassively to be loaded for the trip back to Cybertron, radiating his usual air of boredom. Brawl knew better than to ask him for any assistance or sympathy. It was enough that the shuttle had to transport organics as cargo. He most certainly was not going to deign to help with disposing of the rejects.

Brawl placed the humans on the ground and scraped his talons through the thick tarmac, leaving deep-cut gouges, trying to clean the rusty organic fluid off his digits. Ugh, repulsive. He straightened and cycled up his targeting protocols -- it was probably too much to hope that the organics would all stay still. Frag it, they were already running in different directions. He powered up and aimed at one, fired, turning it instantly to particles that blew away in the constant wind from the lake. He locked in on the second, disintegrated it as well -- no explosions when you killed these organics, which was too bad, just little puffs of dust and bone shards that weren’t very interesting at all. The other two...

Wait. Where the frag had they gone?

“Move, and I’ll fucking cling to the bottom of your foot!”

Oh Primus. Brawl looked down. Yeah, there they were, pressed close against his pede, hugging his plating with their tacky little hands. Like dynametal ducklings, and it would have been cute if it hadn’t also been so disgusting.

“First time you take a step, there’ll be blood everywhere, hair and entrails just fucking wrapped around every one of these gears -- it’s gonna last for years before it rots out!” screamed the female, as if he could not hear its guttural, organic speech perfectly well at this distance. Fragging organics were *loud*.

“Mother of God, Mikaela,” muttered the dark-colored human.

Brawl twisted, trying to bring his carbon dispersion cannon around in a way that neither his arm nor his weapon were ever intended to turn. When that failed, he tried to figure out some kind of minor transformation sequence, right then and there, more than a little desperate. A shot at this range would probably cost him a big chunk of his own pede. Which was starting to sound like not such a terrible option, frankly.

 _//Just pick them up, fool,//_ Blast Off finally commed, sounding superior and amused -- like always.

Oh. Brawl bent over, nearly unbalanced as the two humans dodged around -- he wasn’t built for this kinda scrap! But the female was slow, like its gyros were out of order, and he finally managed to grab it. He seized the dark one, too, while it was distracted by the female’s shouts.

But now that Brawl had them, what was he going to *do* with them? If he put them down, they’d run right back under his pedes, the little fraggers. He could squish them, but -- ugh, no. If he reconfigured his arm for throwing, maybe he could hurl them far enough away... and then target and shoot them before they made it back. Yeah, that could work. Humans weren’t that fast, and the female was limping pretty badly.

Thoroughly pleased with himself, Brawl shifted his weaponry up a little, loosened his shoulder rotor, reared back....

...and was very nearly blasted flat onto his faceplates. A pair of sonic booms -- so loud and close-spaced they were a single cra- _THWOOM_ of thunder -- shook the ground. Brawl staggered, righted himself, desperate not to end up covered with those threatened entrails... and found a null ray powered up and pressed to his helm.

Alpha-class Vosian Seeker. Fraggity frag -- this cycle could not possibly get any worse.

"Hand over the organics," the alpha screeched, weapons crackling with withheld charge. A much larger delta class shuttleformer, with the same Vosian explorer coloring, touched down into the lake itself, transforming just as his underchassis brushed the water. In root mode, he rose up out of the depths like a leviathan, wading to the shallows, sheets of water cascading off his frame. There he began deftly collecting the three unsorted volunteers who'd escaped outside, plucking them out of cold, wind-whipped water where they had thrown themselves in their attempt to flee.

Blast Off finally deigned to transform, the great hollow of his core cargo space collapsing down as he pushed himself to his pedes. Even in this far more compact shape, he towered over the slender seeker. "They are not your organics. We’ve been granted sole license by Tower Iacon to trade on that clade’s behalf, in this protectorate territory."

"You are forgetting which clade's explorers discovered this world in the first place," the alpha spat back, unintimidated, his aerilons flexing aggressively. "How do you think Prime would rule if Vos challenged Iacon their claim?"

Bored, Blast Off brushed a fine flake of bone off his plating. "Cataloging a world prior to the emergence of its current dominant species hardly qualifies as a legitimate claim," the shuttleformer replied, as if lecturing a newly upgraded hatchling. "The ruling organic clades on this continent requested Iaconian protection. And in exchange, they gave Iacon exclusive trading rights. It is hardly Iacon's fault that Vos never returned to take possession of their discovery." Blast Off inclined his helm in Brawl’s direction, and the heavy grounder stepped back with a vent of relief, the organics still shouting and wriggling in his hands.

"The Prime and Protector do not condone slavery," the delta countered as his massive pedes thundered over the tarmac from the lakeshore. His calm voice only served to accentuate the fury in his field as he positioned himself to loom just behind the alpha. As big a shuttle as Blast Off was, the delta seeker was even larger -- intimidating in the sheer scale of him. Brawl barely cleared his waist. Just one of the enormous engines mantled high over the delta’s shoulders generated as much thrust as Blast Off could manage altogether, and his central bay could fit three times the cargo. The delta was so heavy that his pedes left subtle depressions in the tarmac.

Worse, where a delta went, alpha squadrons were rarely far behind. They could be looking at a major incursion effort by Vosian do-gooders. Primus save him.

Blast Off lifted a hand to massage the plating at his temples. Fragging Vosians, always concealing their own power plays under the guise of their so-called code of honor. It was now obvious to Blast Off’s superior intellect that these explorers were sent to stake a claim Vos had missed long ago, when they’d undervalued this system in the first place. Too bad. The planet was split now between a half dozen of the more... proactive Tower syndicates, and his team had an exclusive license to deal on behalf of the most powerful of them.

"These organics legally volunteered. Would you have us break our treaties with their kindred? Leave them subject to starvation and squalor, bereft of a useful function? I doubt the Prime would approve.” Organics might not be truly sentient, but they could still enter into binding trade agreements, enforceable under Cybertronian law. Blast Off vented, already weary of the conversation. Where the frag was Onslaught? This was his function. "Our trade compact explicitly includes indentured human labor. Those three you seized are under contract. Ergo, they belong to Iacon, and the both of you are nothing more than thieves."

Blast Off did have to admit that some of the clauses Swindle had negotiated for Iacon were being stretched to their limits. Most particularly the provisions for 'other duties as required' and 'necessary bodily modifications to ensure organic safety and productivity offworld'. But he and Onslaught had examined the contracts and treaties thoroughly, and if the organics were stupid enough to agree... Blast Off saw little need to drive sense into their tiny wetware processors.

And once a human broke its contract, or jeopardized the program, or proved otherwise unsuitable and not worth the cost of transport and care.... Well. The human authorities didn’t want the creatures back, they’d made that much quite clear, though never in so many words. Brawl, for all his many, many shortcomings, was particularly good at dealing with unwanted things.

It was all very clever, and mostly legal. Blast Off approved.

And then Onslaught had to throw this spanner into the works. The two organics Brawl now clutched, holding them gingerly away from his plating, were clearly not under contract -- even a blind mech could see that. What the Pit had Onslaught been thinking, to send Brawl outside with them? Was Blast Off the only member of his team with a complete rack of processors? And who but his half-clocked sparring drone of a teammate would incinerate any of the humans out in the open like this?

Even as he continued to recite the processor-dulling legal arguments, Blast Off impatiently scanned his surroundings for the organics that had all run loose, but found no sign of them. The interlopers had obviously hidden them away in a cargo compartment deep within the delta's palting and shielding.

Fragging seekers.

 

\-----

 

Brawl tuned out the argument. It concerned him little and made even less sense. The only thing that he was getting out of it was that the two Vosians wanted the meat sacks for some scraplet-eaten reason. These two weren't even valuable, for Primus’ sake. 'Take them!' he wanted to cry. Just... get them away from him.

The two organics fell silent, and with a sudden frisson of foreboding, Brawl looked down... just in time to watch the female deliberately run its finger along one of his talons, drawing more of that horrible rust-colored organic fluid. Oh fragging Primus as a petro rabbit. Brawl could not entirely keep the high-pitched whine from his vocalizer.

Brawl pinged Onslaught desperately. Where were orders when he needed them? The only reply he received was the distracted glyph for wait/processing/busy, as Onslaught and his other two teammates struggled to restore order to the processing facility and shut off the last of the alarms.

A sudden warm wetness trickled between the talons that held the dark human, seeping down into his wiring, splashing over trembling tensors and overwhelming every chemoreceptor with the acrid burn of uric acid. Simultaneously, the female drew its fingers from its buccal cavity and heaved, its squishy body convulsing. And then it forcibly expelled a gloppy, acidic, slimy, horrible thin mush from its intake, spattering it over his cannons, his arm.

Brawl stared, locked in frozen disbelief. He’d been wrong. This cycle could get so, so much worse, after all.

With a roar of shock and outrage, Brawl flung the vile animals in the direction of the Vosians. They wanted the disgusting things, they could have them! What did it matter how he disposed of them -- either way, they were gone now, and good riddance! Both Seekers dove forward to catch the hateful little organics, plucking them out of the air even as their thrusters roared to life. They launched, the sheer force of their engines scouring the tarmac away, sending both Blast Off and Brawl staggering back. Their retreating shapes made for tempting target practice.

"Don't," Blast Off growled, reaching out to seize one of Brawl’s arms -- then thought better of it. Both the furious grounder’s arms were soiled in a manner almost indescribable. "We cannot afford an incident with Vos. Iacon would be enraged; they might assign the contract elsewhere. Onslaught will negotiate for the return of the three that legally volunteered. The female and the dark one were likely never under our jurisdiction in the first place."

 

\------

 

Mikaela didn’t even have time to draw breath for a scream as the monster flung her and Epps away. She flailed helplessly, sky and trees and ground a blur as the wind whipped tears from her eyes, up and down spinning dizzyingly around as she fell. Through the rush of the wind and her own pounding terror, Mikaela dimly registered the familiar metallic clicks and grinds of moving metal, the concussive roar of engines. There was a scorching wash of heat, and for a sudden, horrifying moment she was certain the monster had fired, that she was about to be burned alive or rendered down into dust--

\--and then barbed fingers caught her out of the air, matching her flight and redirecting it. This time she did scream, an aborted shriek of surprise and terror as she was manhandled--robot-handled?--landing for the barest instant on some slick gray alien surface before being launched upward again. More metal flashed by, scarlet and white and blue and alien glyphs folding around her like a Chinese puzzle-box in fast-forward, a cacophonous symphony of intricate gears, hinges, and seams, forming up a floor beneath her feet, her flailing hands suddenly pounding impotently against a glasslike canopy. The alien finished its--transformation, it had to be, she realized--and she was flung backwards, pressed down by G-forces into a seatlike structure. Alien engines roared to full life, and they rocketed into the sky, the ground dropping away with stomach-churning speed.

She realized belatedly that she was alone. That Epps wasn’t with her, inside this … thing. She twisted, trying to see if he’d been rescued, trying to catch a glimpse of where they’d been, but it was already too late. The ground was nothing but an undifferentiated gray-green blur, the lake a dark blot far below. A whirl of clouds whipped by, clouding them in mist. When they cleared, around her was a sight she’d never thought she’d see; the sky, clear and blue and endless and stretching forever, just like in the tales of the old days, when anyone could fly.

Rising up beside them was a massive, sleek shuttle, sun gleaming off of its white and scarlet plating. For just a moment, Mikaela forgot Epps, forgot her father, forgot everything--and just clung to her seat, heart pounding with terror and wonder, as the two aliens banked in perfect synchronization, taking her up into the heavens.

 

\------

 

They only flew for maybe half an hour, but they went high enough that the world was a vast cloudy blue below her, high enough to glimpse the curvature of the earth itself. Mikaela couldn’t tear herself away from the glass, the mech’s engines a rumble-thrum that echoed up through her very bones. Then they descended, her heart in her throat. In the mech’s metal embrace, she glided over forests, a tiny township, networks of broken roads, fields. Agile as an eagle, her mech followed the bigger one, and slowed to hover -- hover! -- over an empty clearing.

The big one landed first. Hands and nose pressed to the cockpit glass, Mikaela watched, wide-eyed, as the alien settled down onto the dirt. The thing landed as lightly as a paper airplane, despite its enormous mass -- like those old filmstrips of the space shuttle, from back before the collapse, but bigger and far more advanced looking. Its loading dock folded down neatly -- and the three nude volunteers bolted.

“No no! Don’t run!” Mikaela pounded on the gold-tinted glass, desperate to make her cries heard. They hadn’t seen what the aliens had done to the recruits who’d run! The way that strange gun thing had swept a rippling ray across the tarmac, the way those men had just... just come apart, shaken into dust. Epps emerged afterward -- apparently he had been scooped up with the rest, thank God. At least Epps was smarter. He also climbed out of the alien, but then stayed close. “Epps, Epps! If it tries to touch you, piss on it again!” She hoped he was well-hydrated.

“Cease your caterwauling, organic,” hissed an evil-sounding voice, echoing through the jet’s small enclosed space.

“Let me go, and I’ll be plenty quiet,” Mikaela shouted, giving the glass another bang. “Epps!”

And then the world fell apart again, gears and plates and metal moving everywhere, a blurring dance of blades, like being caught in a storm of steel. The chamber dropped out from beneath her, and she fell -- and then claws closed around her again. This alien’s fingers were longer and thinner than the green mech’s, but just as wickedly barbed. Mikaela gasped for breath, nauseous despite her empty stomach as the mech stood upright, now wearing its humanoid form. Across the clearing, the space shuttle likewise climbed to its feet, its huge central cargo space collapsing inward. Even without all that empty space, it was still a freaking *enormous* mech, close to twice as tall as the one holding her, if you counted those massive engines sticking up over its shoulders, and four or five times as broad.

The huge one took a few steps forward, pointed at her, and squealed a long string of its annoying-ass language. It ignored both the fleeing volunteers and Epps, who did his best to stay close to its huge feet.

He wasn’t nearly as fast as the recruits -- they’d gone barefoot for most of the last four months, unlike him. “Mikaela! Are you alright?” he called up to her, following that up with a resounding “Fuck!” as he trotted through a patch of burrs.

“Do I freaking *look* alright to you?” she called down to him, estimating her chances of surviving if she fell. Or was thrown. The mechs chittered over her head in heated discussion, like a piano crashing down a very long staircase and into a metal-cutting shop.

Epps watched the two mechs for a moment. The one that held Mikaela had almost solid shin guards -- he couldn’t spot any way to climb it from here. From the back, though.... Bracing himself, he darted between the two robots, half certain he’d end up as a puff of dust. But neither alien seemed to notice. “I don’t think they’re that interested in us,” he shouted up at Mikaela, trotting around the smaller mech’s foot.

“Yeah? Tell it to this fucker,” Mikaela yelled. He did have a point, though -- aside from pointing vigorously at her, Epps, and the vanished volunteers, both aliens mostly seemed enthralled in their argument. ‘Course, this one wasn’t putting her down, either. Mikaela wriggled a little. Jesus Christ, it felt like her knee had swollen up like a grapefruit. She definitely wasn’t going anywhere. The two aliens went right on squealing. Mikaela listened and fumed.

Mikaela had always had an ear for mechanical sounds. Probably came from growing up in a shop, hearing those things and copying those noises before she even could physically produce the smoother tones of English and Spanish. Sharp clicks and toks, high-pitched squeals, the sputter of a crippled engine -- and she knew when something was out of sequence. Didn’t mean she understood any of this alien chitter-bleeping, like one of those old modems crossed with a junkyard crusher... except. That one phrase, or whatever. It kept coming up, loudly. A sequence, maybe, six rapid clicks of varying tone overlaid with a hiss-pop-whee, and sped up to about three times the speed of any normal word, usually accompanied by a gesture in her direction. She’d heard it from the green one too, and from others before. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be anything nice.

Mikaela pounded on the side of the alien’s hand. Shit, that hurt. “Do not fucking call me--” she shouted up at the robots, “a _:fragging organic:_!”

Both robots went silent. Four pairs of glowing eyes, two red and two blue, focused down on her. Fuck, this probably wasn't such a great idea. The far bigger alien leaned close, blinked its eyes in creepy sequence, so that three were open at any given time.

“You can *speak,*” it said, in wonder.

 

\---------

 

Apparently, this chapter has not been showing up for some people. If you can see this, would you mind dropping us a line? Or wave to Femme on LJ or any of her other contact means. That way, I can avoid spamming this list. Thx!

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to HopeofDawn for joining as a co-author!


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